Piracy articles

Last week, Google altered their search engine algorithm to demote some of the most "notorious" piracy-related websites. The new algorithm is designed to direct people to legitimate sources of content when they search for terms such as "download", "free", or…

In an effort to curb online piracy, Google will be rolling out an update to its search engine this week that will "visibly affect" the rankings of some of the most "notorious" sites, the company announced in a blog post.
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Google Glass crossed the pond earlier this month but the reception hasn't exactly been stellar. According to a report from The Independent, cinemas in the UK are preparing to ban the headset over fears that it would be used to…

The original Popcorn Time project may have been short-lived upon pressure from big media groups, but the idea behind it lived on through a handful of spinoffs. One of them, Time4Popcorn, has been hard at work adding new features, from…

Watch Dogs isn’t officially out until this Tuesday, May 27, but the highly anticipated game has already made its way into the hands of some gamers -- either through retailers breaking the street date or leaked copies on torrent sites.…

The U.S. Department Of Justice has convicted two men for illegally distributing copyrighted Android apps. Accused Nicholas Anthony Narbone, 26, and "co-conspirator" Thomas Allen Dye, 21, ran Appbucket.net and according to the authorities illegally distributed more than 1 million copies…

Ever wondered how much a torrent portal, linking site, or cyberlocker earns from advertisements? The Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) has released a comprehensive report (PDF) detailing how much piracy sites are making in ad revenue. Titled “Good Money Gone Bad:…

Following news from TorrentFreak last week that Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show of 2013, it has now been revealed that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was the most pirated film of the year. TorrentFreak reports that…

Game of Thrones has taken out the illustrious title of 'Most Pirated TV Show' for the second year in a row, according to data from TorrentFreak. At its peak - the season finale titled 'Mhysa' - the popular HBO TV…

An Ex-Moderator of a now defunct BitTorrent site swebits.org has been hit with the hefty fine of $652,000 (4.3m Swedish Krona) by the Västmanlands District Court for uploading a pre-release copy of a Swedish language movie Beck – Buried Alive,…

The US government has agreed to settle a piracy lawsuit with software maker Apptricity. It was determined that the military used pirated logistics software from Apptricity for years and despite initially seeking nearly a quarter billion in unpaid licenses, the…

There's nothing that PC gamers hate more than restrictive anti-piracy measures (and bad console ports), so it will be welcome news that CD Projekt Red are completely ditching DRM for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The developer posted an open…

Piracy has been a thorn in the side of the movie industry for many years now, and doesn't appear to be letting up in any sort of meaningful way. While people pirate films for many different reasons, a new report…

Netflix has begun its official rollout in the Netherlands. The company’s primary goal is to amass a substantial user base, similar to what it has in the United States. As a result, the Netflix team needs to assess what its viewers…

An unresolved dispute between Time Warner and CBS has left millions of cable subscribers without access to CBS programming. As of last Friday, more than three million Time Warner subscribers (as well as Bright House and Dish users) have been…

Comcast is working an alternative to the so-called “six strikes” copyright alert system (CAS) that launched earlier this year in the US, according to a report on Variety. The system involves sending real-time warnings to illegal downloaders, along with a…

Since the start of the year, Google has received and complied with over 100 million requests to remove allegedly copyright infringing webpages from their search results. This mammoth amount of takedowns is already more than the amount for the entirety…

Google has been filtering piracy related sites from its instant and autocomplete search functionality for a couple years, and now the company has added popular music streaming service Grooveshark to the list of sites that will no longer appear automatically…

The first mobile version of Deus Ex recently hit the iTunes App Store but not without a bit of controversy. A number of gamers have discovered some interesting behavior when run on a jailbroken iOS device. When launching Deus Ex: The Fall for the first time...

As expected, a controversial French anti-piracy measure known as the Hadopi law has been overturned and replaced with a system that issues automatic fines instead of disconnecting suspected copyright infringers from the Internet.

Through a program called SiDiM, researchers at the Darmstadt Technical University in Germany have developed a new form of digital rights management (DRM) to counter piracy and trace a pirated work back to its original source.

Hadopi, France's "three-strikes" anti-piracy law, could be in for sweeping changes or even discarded as officials once again ponder the controversial measure. According to the New York Times, France's administration is exploring the closure of the agency tasked with enforcing the…

Netflix recently launched another exclusive on its video streaming service, this time bringing back a classic from the early 2000s, the critically acclaimed sitcom Arrested Development. Fifteen new episodes launched on May 26 and they are already quite popular on…

In a new example of the entertainment industry’s disconnect with reality and their overreaching tactics, an anti-piracy group known as the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property has issued a 89-page report in which they cite billions of…